Prior to the conception and development of the present invention, children may have been verbally limited by their parents to a certain amount of usage time for electronic devices, but not in a way secured by the parents free from tampering by their children. Others have devised various ways to deal with this issue. DeVries in U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,208 teaches a locking timer and outlet cover, which enables single times to be locked with a padlock inside a box. The DeVries assembly suffers from the drawbacks that only one timer can be accommodated, and it must be mounted at a wall outlet, which may necessitate an unusually long cord to the electrical or electronic device. Extension cords would render the assembly useless, because then the electronic device could be unplugged and moved to another outlet with no timer.
Sweeney Jr, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,722,984 discloses a controller for video games with parental controls wherein the timer is built into the game controller. This necessitates a specially designed and built controller which is likely to be prohibitively expensive.
U.S. Patent Application Publications numbered 2005/0094786, 2007/0234380, and 2009/0102616 all disclose an apparatus and/or method for time-based control of electrical or electronic devices. None teach use of multiple timers or ways to control multiple devices from a single unit.